Fact or Weapon
by thesewordselope
Summary: This is different, though, because we haven't been able to face one another in the dark yet, not without the sobering light of the sun coming in through the window, illuminating all the shadowy corners and chaperoning our every move. post-Mockingjay
1. Action Potential

Chapter 1: Action Potential

Author: Ella (thesewordselope)

Fandom: The Hunger Games Trilogy

Pairing: Katniss/Peeta

A/N: Filling in the blanks on how Katniss and Peeta grow back together at the end of Mockingjay. Pre-epilogue. Spoilers for all three books. Canon-compliant. Thanks to Jessi, Angela, and Lindsey for comments. I plan to write more fics in this series, so stay tuned.

**Content notice: This chapter has been _lightly censored_ to comply with FF's policy banning explicit content. If you are 18+ years old and wish to read the story in its original, uncensored form, you may do so at AO3 (you will be asked if you are old enough to view explicit content before you can view the story). You can find the link to my AO3 profile on my FF bio page.**

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I can't remember the last time that sleep came easily, and lately bedtime has turned into the distraction Olympics. I follow the ceiling fan's blades around and around with my eyes until I am dizzy. I nudge Buttercup off of the bed with my feet. I pick the dirt out from under my fingernails by moonlight. Shockingly, none of it helps me sleep. I even try touching myself, but let's be honest, that hasn't worked since the first reaping.

Actually, no, that isn't true. There had been a few times, during the relatively relaxed months between the end of the first Games and the Quarter Quell announcement, that it had worked. Not that I can remember any exact instances or anything, but it can't really have been two whole years, can it? Can a person even go that long? It occurs to me that I don't even know anyone whom I could ask a question like that.

I don't think a normal person _could_ go that long, but I suppose I'm an extreme case.

Dr. Aurelius had given me a bottle of pills to help me sleep before I departed the Capitol for home. I keep them on the bureau on the far side of the room, mainly so that they're far enough away that I have to make a deliberate decision to get up and take them. I don't really like them and try not to take them except for in extreme circumstances. They make me feel... anchored. Like I'm floating in a bathtub with the water draining, and my limbs are slowly losing buoyancy, becoming heavy, turning to stone and weighing me down against the bottom. That part isn't so bad, and I do have to admit that they make me sleep like a rock, but they also make my vision skittish and my head fuzzy. So, like I said, I try not to take them.

Without the pills, I'm a bit short on coping mechanisms and long on thoughts that keep me awake. It hadn't always been this way. I used to have a coping mechanism that worked, but I'm afraid that too much had happened to us and between us for that to work again. I don't want to depress myself thinking about the Victory tour, so tonight I try to keep my thoughts neutral. Tomorrow I'm going to go hunting (without Gale). I'm going to bring any kills to (the Hob) the new village and sell them to (Mayor Undersee, Darius, Peeta's father) Greasy Sae. I'm going to come home (without Prim) and feed Buttercup (Prim) and sit around the house and mope for a while (about Prim) before going to Haymitch's house for tea.

I look through the window at Haymitch's house and see the lights on in the kitchen. I could probably go over there _now_ for tea. It would be better than kidding myself in this bed any longer.

My bedclothes cover me well enough, so I slip on some shoes and head out into the pleasantly crisp night. The night sounds are soothing: leaves rustling in the light breeze, crickets chirping, gravel crunching beneath my feet. I wonder if I could sleep better outside?

I'm not sure why, but I pause outside of Peeta's house. The lights are all off, the curtains drawn. I know he's inside, though. I know it logically (where else would he be?), but I also know it viscerally. I can feel it, as if there's an invisible thread that binds us together, and I am always aware of his presence at the other end. Peeta is home. I wonder if he's having any better luck than I am with the whole sleeping thing. Somehow I doubt it. I don't exactly have a monopoly on misery.

I step up to the front porch and rest my hand on the front doorknob. I don't know if this was the plan all along, but this is what I'm doing now. The knob turns, and I push the door open slowly. The house is completely dark, but the layout is exactly the same as mine, so it isn't difficult to find the stairs and the main bedroom from there.

My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I can make out a Peeta-shaped lump in the bed with the help of a little bit of moonlight coming in through the partially-open window. I can hear him grinding his teeth in his sleep. He's on his back, with one arm thrown over his head on the pillow and the other hand tucked under his chin. Despite being asleep, he looks very uncomfortable. His prosthetic is propped up against the bedside table, and then I notice the flat sheets where his leg should be. I've actually never seen him without the prosthetic on; he used to sleep in it when we were together. It had never really occurred to me that it might have been more comfortable for him to take it off, and now I wonder why he hadn't. Maybe it would have made him even less comfortable to let me see him without it.

I take a step toward the bed, but then I pause. I don't even know if it is safe to be here. Peeta and I haven't discussed his treatment in the Capitol, so I have no idea exactly how much progress he's made, but I do know that he's come a long way. In the past few months, we've actually gotten to the point where we are fairly comfortable being alone in each other's presence during the day, taking the occasional meal together in my kitchen or his, or working on our books together. We never talk much, but we are slowly learning to be around one another without too many awkward glances or conversational missteps. Silence helps. With Peeta, the silences are almost always comfortable, just like they were with Gale. The worst that's happened so far is that I've caught him a few times looking at me like he doesn't quite know what to think, but those moments are getting fewer and further between. This is different, though, because we haven't been able to face one another in the dark yet, not without the sobering light of the sun coming in through the window, illuminating all the shadowy corners and chaperoning our every move. Even so, I think I'm safe right now. Safe enough.

The other question is whether I should wake him, if he's managed to fall asleep... but I am also positive that he's not having pleasant dreams at the moment, given that he's grinding his teeth and grimacing in his sleep. And, in a selfish way, I need him to be awake. I need to share this misery with the only person in the world who has a chance of understanding. Maybe I can help him too. It wouldn't be the first time.

I cross the remaining distance and put a hand on Peeta's arm, the one that's flung over his head. He doesn't respond, so I squeeze it gently. "Peeta," I whisper. Then, more loudly, "Peeta. Wake up."

His body tenses, and then his other hand clamps down on my forearm. He snaps into a sitting position and starts to jerk me down violently, but then realization dawns on his face. "_Shit_. Katniss." He lets go of my arm. "I'm sorry... are you okay?"

The shock hurt more than the squeezing and jerking, but I rub my arm anyway. I probably asked for that. "Yeah, I'm fine. I should've known better."

Peeta sighs and sits back, making room for me on the bed. I sit down next to him, letting my feet dangle just over the cold floor. "You're lucky I didn't... well... look, if you're going to wake me up, maybe you should do it from across the room from now on."

"You were grinding your teeth," is all I can think to say. It sounds lame, even to me. "Nightmares?"

"What else?" I notice his glance flitting to the prosthetic leg for a moment, but he lets it go. "You?"

"No, I couldn't sleep at all. I rarely can." I don't add the part where I was thinking about our nights together on the train.

"We used to help each other with this kind of thing." Now he's toying with the edge of the sheet, not looking at me. "Real or not real?"

"Real."

"Is that why you're here?" Good fucking question.

"I guess so. I ran out of distractions." I sneak a glance over at him, and he's still playing with the sheet, folding it into pleats. Does he not _want_ to face me? Granted, I'm staring at the doorway instead of looking at him, so we're both facing out instead of each other. After all that we've been through, can we really not look one another in the eye? We sit in silence for a few moments.

"Why didn't you come sooner?" he asks quietly, after some thought. Oh, that's why he doesn't want to look at me. I know he's afraid of how I'll respond, and I don't really know how to answer his question. Part of it was simply shell-shock, part of it was the drugs. Part of it was that I needed time to process everything that had happened in the past two years, but how much time can I reasonably expect to take? I'm not sure that any amount of time would ever be long enough, and I had already made him wait thirteen years. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been trying to figure out how I felt about Gale, but I know now that Gale and I will never be together. Even if I really had a choice, I still wouldn't choose him. Not now. But that didn't mean I wasn't torn up about it. It didn't mean I didn't desire closure. Suddenly I felt guilty about coming over here.

"I wasn't sure if it was-"

"Safe?" he finishes for me. And yeah, that's a part of it too, so I just nod. It's simpler than trying to explain the rest of it. "I think you _are_ safe, now. They really-" he swallows, "They did a number on me. Back at the Capitol. Dr. Aurelius gave me these pills..."

"I know all about Dr. Aurelius's pills."

Peeta nods. "He actually had some really great ideas, though. I'll tell you about them sometime." He finally turns and looks at me. "I'm guessing you didn't come here to talk right now though, huh?"

He's right. I'm in no mood to talk. Fortunately he scoots over and makes room for me to lie down next to him. To be honest, that isn't really what I want to do right now, either. I'm not even entirely sure what it is that I want to do until I'm doing it. The fact is that thinking about our nights on the train leads me to thinking about all the kisses we shared for the cameras. Thinking about those kisses makes me think of the one kiss that _hadn't _been for the cameras, which had left me wanting nothing but more. I've had far too much time between now and then to waste with regret. So instead of lying down, I straddle his lap and kiss him again for... not the first time since then, but that's what it feels like. Peeta tries to protest, but I just press our mouths more firmly together, stifling his startled noises. He gives in to it, to me, for a moment, but then he grabs my shoulders and pulls away.

"Who am I to you right now?" I see the slightest glint of accusation in his eyes. It's an ambiguous question, and probably deliberately so. How do I feel about him? Friend. Lover. Victor. Patient. A human morphling drip. Or, quite literally, _who_ was he? Peeta or Gale? I think, in a weird way, he might be both right now.

"I don't know," I say honestly. "Up." Peeta raises his arms slightly so that I can pull his shirt over his head. He doesn't say anything; he just leans back and stares into my eyes. I don't want to make eye contact with him, because then there would be no ambiguity. He wouldn't be anyone or any_thing_ else; he would only be Peeta, large, strung-out, warm, tentative, unstable, thoughtful Peeta.

I can't help it. I look, and I can't quite read his expression. Is that a flicker of exasperation or confusion? Indulgence? Bemusement? Sadness? Hesitation? Or is that what I'm feeling? His blue irises have flecks of golden brown around the pupils. If not for that, I could almost pretend that they were Gale's grey eyes in this dim light. No such luck.

"Whoever I am, do you love me?"

My mouth tastes like copper coins. I wasn't prepared for this question. "I don't know."

He finally lets his eyes drop away as he looks around the room, obviously exasperated but trying not to show it. "Could you _live_ without me?" He asks, lilting his voice a little at the word "live", and I know it is a facetious, maybe even sarcastic question.

When I think about life without Peeta, I bring back sense memories of the feel the smooth glass of the hospital syringe in my hand and the tension in my arm when aiming the Mockingjay bow. How many times did I have to gather the resolve to kill Peeta, when I thought he had allied with the Careers, when I thought the Capitol had taken us both as prisoners, when I thought he'd never come out of that awful mutt state, that he'd get in the way, that everything would be for nothing? What luck (or fate) can I thank (or blame) for the fact that it never had to happen? And... I had been prepared to kill Gale as well, hadn't I? I try to ignore the doubt that bubbles up inside me, but after all, hadn't I flaked out on that promise too? "I don't know. Maybe." I lie.

His eyes find mine again, and he's determined now. Resolved. I see a muscle flex at the corner of his jaw. "Can you... survive... without me?" There's no playful lift in his voice this time, only steel, and I feel the sting of his words like the promise of tears. I hold them back, because he doesn't know that I heard his conversation with Gale, and I don't want to change that. I let out a shaky sigh, suddenly very aware of his thighs under mine. More memories come to the surface in the space of a few seconds as I try to tease out an answer.

Gale and I sitting side by side in a tree, laughing; the easy, comfortable companionship. "I love you," Gale had said in the cabin by the lake, probably emboldened by the fact that I finally wanted to run away with him.

Peeta and I in the dripping cave, me kissing him, him delirious and overly warm, bleeding through his bandages. "I don't care if you see me," he had said by the stream that day. He had been half-naked then, and I had seen the hair on his chest just like I could now. "I care, okay?" I had replied.

Prim in her medic outfit, mouthing my name silently moments before the bomb went off a second time, the bomb that Gale conceived, a war tactic born from our hunting games in District 12.

That was the moment, I think. That was when the invisible tether binding me to Gale was cut. It wasn't his fault, of course. He hadn't given the orders, he didn't authorize Prim to travel to the Capitol, and he most certainly would never have done anything to deliberately hurt her.

And yet, none of that matters. Not now. Not where it counts.

It isn't enough that I have to mourn my sister and all the people who died for me, or because of me. I also have to mourn my friendship with Gale.

Is _that_ why I'm here right now?

Peeta's still waiting for an answer. He's still looking right into my eyes, but I can't look back. I'm afraid to, for some reason, like with the muttation monkeys in the Arena that attacked us the moment we made eye contact with them. Eye contact is aggressive, no matter how you slice it. Even animals, even muttations know that. It demands a connection, an answer, a catharsis.

Can I survive without Peeta? I shake my head. "No." It's barely a whisper.

He sits forward at that, cupping my face with his hands, tilting my face up toward his, and he kisses me, soft at first but leaning steadily into it. I open my mouth slightly and feel his tongue pressing just against the flesh of my lips. His hands drop from my face to brush the exposed skin of my shoulders. I am very aware of my hands, which had been on my lap up to this point. What do I do with my hands? I feel a warm fluttering sensation rise from my stomach to my chest, and I decide to rest them on Peeta's sides. I can feel the fine hairs there, less coarse than the ones that had been there before the skin grafts. His hands slide down even further, to my sides, and then he pulls my shirt over my head and moves one hand forward to cup my breast, with the other hand pressed against the small of my back. I feel the cold flush of goosebumps in response to the warmth of his hands on my skin. Oh. _Oh_.

Our kissing has reached a steady rhythm, not relaxed but not fervent. Deliberate. Strong. I move my torso as close to his as I can, trying to squeeze out all of the space between us. Trying to push us together so that there's no room for doubts or bad memories. I need more. I need... more. I can feel him under my lap, and there's no ignoring the effect I'm having on him right now. I'm not exactly untouched myself, but I still need him closer. I need...

I pull away from him just long enough to lie down on the bed beside him and guide him on top of me. For a moment I think he's going to fall on top of me, but he finds a way to balance most of his weight on his remaining leg. From this angle, the rest of his weight pushes down on me, and he feels a bit closer, but it still isn't enough. Peeta seems very responsive to this shift in position, because his breathing picks up and he's kissing me more fervently now, pushing his tongue further into my mouth, pressing me into the mattress. My whole world is now Peeta; his presence is so immediate and... pervasive... that it blocks out all other stimuli. I notice that he's pushing against the inside of my thigh, and this realization sends a hot, tingling sensation rising from between my legs. Oh, _yes_.

This new sensation has me feeling bold, so I reach down between us to touch him. This was, apparently, the wrong thing to do, because he pulls away from me. "Katniss..." There's a hesitation in his voice.

"No. It's okay. I want this."

Peeta sighs. "Well, it's pretty obvious that I want it too. But this isn't really _how_ I want it. It's not right."

I frown. "You don't need to protect me, I said it's okay. I'm perfectly capable of making that choice."

"Okay, fine." He pulls away completely at that, sitting back up beside me with an awkward little hopping motion. "Couldn't it be that I'm trying to protect _myself_? I mean, you come out of nowhere all of a sudden, after all this time-"

"I don't-"

"I _love_ you, Katniss. I remember it now, and I have since..." He shrugs. "Well, for a lot longer than you've known about it. I can't do it like this, okay? I need to know that you're..." He casts around for the right word. "That you're _with_ me. That you're present, you know?"

This conversation is only taking us further away from what I need right now. The fact is that being with Peeta has always been the only thing that kept me from imploding. All of the distractions are gone now, and there's nothing left in my house, in my _brain_, but myself and my memories. The fact is that I need Peeta now more than ever. I need Peeta with me, I need Peeta _inside_ me, because I just can't deal with being the only person inside my skin anymore.

I don't know how to articulate any of that to him. "It's too soon to know what I feel, but I know what I _am_. I'm yours now, the way you've always been mine. I'm here. I'm _with_ you. No cameras, it's real." All of these things are true, but saying it feels like a weapon.

At any rate, it seems to placate him a little bit, because he settles back down next to me. If he has any big romantic thoughts about what I just said, he doesn't share them. "It's late."

"I know."

"Can you sleep now?" I just look at him, because it's a stupid question. "Yeah, I know, stupid question." He adjusts his shorts, and I can see that he's still visibly excited. Now that my annoyance is fading away, even the very short distance between us is making me uncomfortable. I lean to the side to kiss him again, tilting my hips so that they're pressed against his. I want to feel him between my legs again, it's almost _imperative_. He places his hand on the outside of my thigh, rubbing it lightly and making the new hairs stand up on the sensitive skin grafts there. "I have an idea," he whispers.

He sits up a bit and hooks his thumbs under the band of my underwear, then he looks up at me. It takes me a moment before I realize that he's asking for permission, so I give him a small nod and lift my hips so that he can slide them down. He lies back on top of me and kisses my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder, but I'm paying more attention to the feel of him rubbing between my legs through his cotton shorts. I shift my weight down, so that he's now grinding his hips into mine and rubbing himself right up against me. It's so... close... and yet...

My breath feels too big for my chest. I open my mouth and exhale loudly. How long is he content to do this? To press himself against me without...

He pulls away slightly, but before I can protest, he moves his free hand between us and touches me. There. It isn't exactly what I wanted, but oh man, I'll _take_ it. He touches me in small, slow circles, and it feels like I'm rising slowly toward the sky. I close my eyes and I'm somewhere in the clouds, flying higher and higher. I have an unshakeable desire to fidget, and my feet are moving back and forth against the bedsheets. I begin to level off, and it's such a delicious hunger that I dare not speak, dare not even breathe, as if the tension would begin to unravel at the slightest provocation. There are no nightmares, no thoughts, no confusion, no faces of the dead or the estranged. There's nothing up here with me, except for the comforting knowledge that Peeta is somewhere nearby, driving me forward.

In my silent concentration I can hear Peeta's breath growing unsteady and feel his body getting twitchy above mine. He's now grinding lightly but rhythmically against one of my thighs, and I imagine for a moment that instead of rubbing against me, he's pushing _into_ me. Something deep inside me bottoms out at the thought, and instead of floating on my cloudy plateau, I'm diving, plummeting toward the ground. It comes quickly, and I let out a small, startled noise as I crash into it. My abs clench, and my back arches involuntarily off of the bed as sensation rolls over me like waves. Peeta breathes raggedly into my ear as I lose myself, and then, slowly, begin get my bearings back. He's no longer moving, but just pressing tightly into me with his forehead against my temple. We lay like that for a little while, I don't know how long, and eventually our breathing slows down to a normal pace.

When I open my eyes, he's lying on his side next to me and staring at me again. Why does he keep doing that? "What are you thinking?" I ask instead.

"You're so beautiful," he says. I don't really have a response to that, so I scrunch my nose. He chuckles softly. "Do you think you can sleep now?"

"Yeah. I feel like I could sleep for days." Something occurs to me. "What about you? Did you..." I shrug, as if to say _you know what I mean. Don't make me say it._

Peeta smiles. "No, I didn't. And yeah, I _probably_ could..."

"You should let me-" I start, but he interrupts me.

"No. I don't think I'm ready for that."

I feel selfish, but I'm already starting to feel quite sleepy. "Okay, then you should do it."

He raises an eyebrow. "What, here? Now?"

"Why not?" It's only fair.

He reaches down and touches himself lightly through his shorts, almost absently. "I would sleep better. And that was- you were-" I'm not sure I've ever seen Peeta at a loss for words before. "You just really have _no idea_ what-"

"-what kind of effect I can have?" I finish for him. "I think I have a rough idea now. Thanks for helping me figure that out."

Peeta laughs out loud at that. "You're welcome," he says, running his thumb over himself now. After a moment, he adds, "I think I'm self-conscious. This is new."

"So close your eyes and pretend I'm not here. Or that I'm nearby but not watching you directly. In all fairness, I might fall asleep, so that should help." He considers this, and then rolls over on his back and closes his eyes. One of his hands rests behind his head, and he puts the other hand under the band of his shorts. I can tell that he's touching himself, but I can't really tell what he's doing exactly. I'm not sure why it matters to me so much, but I really want to see everything, so I grab his shorts and pull them down over his hands.

"Damnit," he rolls his hips to one side and then to the other to help me get the shorts off. "You know, I _asked_ first."

"Shh, I'm not here." I settle back, propping my head in my hand with my elbow against the pillow, taking a long first look at what Peeta had originally been so flippant about letting me see during our first Hunger Games together. _I don't care if you see me_, he had said. He had also been half-delirious with fever and infection. In any event, I'm definitely seeing it now. I see moonlight illuminating the patchy skin of his stomach, which is currently pulled tightly into goosebumps. I see his pubic hair, darker blonde than the rest of his body hair and twisting into small, tight curls above his-

I thought I was going to fall asleep, but seeing Peeta unclothed brings me back into the moment. That's what he had been pressing against me. That's what I had imagined pushing inside me and what had brought me crashing down. I find myself wanting it all over again, but the desire isn't as sharp as it was before, dulled by sleepiness and my earlier release. I settle for resting my free hand on his stomach, and Peeta inhales sharply at my touch but doesn't open his eyes. He's been touching himself, slowly and deliberately at first, but with a steadily increasing speed.

I wonder how many times Peeta has done this in the past two years. Undoubtedly more often than I have, since I have a vague idea that there's more of a physiological imperative for guys than there is for girls. I wonder how often he thinks of me when he does it. Does he think of me in Cinna's elaborate dresses and makeup, or does he think of me as I was during the Games, dirty, bloody, and full of adrenaline? Did he do it on the other side of the wall from me on the train? In the elaborate Capitol showers? In his tiny bedroom back in the old town? Here, in this bed, on nights before tonight?

Now that my head is clear, I can study him without any distractions. I note the hitching in his breath, the way his head pushes back against the pillow with concentration, and the small movements he makes into his hand. I wonder if this was how he saw me, but no, it had to have been different because I am merely aroused right now and not on the brink. I'm not matching him touch for touch in my head the way he must have been doing with me before. I wonder what I had looked like through his eyes. I wonder what he had felt. I make a mental note to find out some other time. I stop watching his hand and switch my attention to his face. Short blonde curls are sticking to his forehead with sweat. His face is- he's grimacing a bit, in a very concentrated way, and that's strangely arousing, too. What if he was on top of me, pressing into me, making that face? Looking into my eyes with barely controlled desperation? I think I wouldn't mind some direct eye contact in that situation. I think I-

Peeta lets out a low moan and moves even faster. He's definitely in the clouds now. I'm a million miles away to him, but I know he knows we're tethered together, because that's how I had felt, too. My heart rate is speeding up with his movements, as sleepiness melts away and the tether pulls me closer to him. My skin is warm, my body reacting, stirring, as Peeta's movements become more desperate. "Oh, _god_," he says in a low, understated voice. _Oh, god_, I think, as his body tenses up and stops moving.

Unexpectedly, he opens his eyes and looks at me as he begins to crash. If I had to pick a word to describe the look he's giving me, the closest word would be _concerned_, maybe even _earnest_, but those aren't exactly right, either. I watch his descent, feeling it vicariously through his eyes, and he closes them again as he hits the ground, arching off of the bed a little and making small guttural noises as he comes. I don't see him come because I'm too busy watching his face, but I notice it on his chest and stomach a moment later.

He lets out a long exhale and says, "Damn," in that same understated tone, now looking up at the ceiling. The hand that he had been holding himself with drops to the bedsheet.

I can't move. I have no idea what to say, so I just lie still and wait for him to do or say something. Thankfully, he tilts his head to the side and looks at me again. Most of the intensity is gone from his face, but the sweat still glues his blonde curls to his forehead.

"I love you," he says.

"I know." I really have got to come up with a better response to that.

He gives me a short but deliberate kiss and then moves to the edge of the bed to put on his other leg. He leaves the room for a moment, and I see the light flicker on in the bathroom and hear running water. I roll back and stare at the wooden ceiling, trying not to think too deeply about what just happened. Shallow thoughts only, at least for now. Things may have changed between Peeta and I permanently, but I'll unravel that thread later. Right now, I focus on the fact that I actually feel moderately relaxed. That was good. Peeta was good. Maybe... too good. Has he done that before? I bite the inside of my cheek. As good and relaxed as I feel right now, I feel a brief twinge of irrational jealousy. I hate it.

When he returns he appears to have cleaned up. His face, chest, and stomach glisten with small water droplets that cling to his hair. After pulling his shorts back on, he grabs the covers and pulls them over us both. I can't help noticing that he's left his prosthetic on again. Peeta pulls me close against him and presses his face into my hair. I can feel him toying with the ends of my hair with one hand. "I'm never letting you go now, you know that, right?" he says against the back of my neck, and yeah, I'm okay with that. I don't want to talk anymore, so I close my eyes and listen to the soft sound of his breathing, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest against my back. I fall asleep almost immediately, and I'm blessed with no dreams. At least, none that I can remember.

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	2. Exocytosis

Chapter 2: Exocytosis

See Chapter 1 for other notes.

Warning: This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.

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Peeta soaks in the river, staring at the birds flying overhead. The sunlight dapples through the leaves of the tall trees far above him, glimmering gold and orange and fading slowly to red. His tracker jacker stings feel almost alive with the way they make his senses buzz and tingle, but the soaking helps a little. The gash in his leg is much, much worse, and he's too terrified to look at it right now. He honestly doesn't know how he even made it as far as the river with such a bad cut.

He closes his eyes, trying to concentrate on breathing through the pain, but it's hard to stay afloat with his eyes closed because his sense of balance is all off-kilter. "Proooo-priiii-ooooh-cept-ion" he says out loud, feeling the roundness of the word stretching his numb lips. He has no idea where he learned that word. It doesn't feel like something from this life; it feels like it comes from someone else's memories, but that doesn't even make sense. None of this makes sense. None of this is real.

Real bleeds into not real because, he thinks, there is no way that his skin is really undulating like that. He watches as little bumps begin to rise all along on his arms and then begin to move in seemingly random patterns. Peeta's heart speeds up as the bumps- the _things_ under his skin- start to move up from his limbs and toward his face. He tries to push them back down his arms with his hands, but they just tunnel deeper under his skin. They buzz more loudly, and Peeta gets the very surreal impression that whatever they are, they're _angry_. Peeta starts to see black blossoms in front of his vision, and he's afraid that he's actually going to pass out from fear. He has no idea what to do, so he starts screaming.

He feels her hands grip the back of his jacket before he sees her. "_Shut up_, Peeta, someone will hear you," she hisses, pulling him out of the water and up onto the river bank, where she unbuckles his belt and pulls off his soaking wet pants. She lifts his torso and pulls his shirt over his head, and finally she takes out a knife and cuts off his underwear. He wants to ask her what the hell she's doing or how she found him, but he's rooted to the spot with fear, unable to move his limbs or his lips. Then, she says, "You're not going to like this," and plunges her fingers knuckle-deep into each of his stings. She pulls a live tracker jacker out of each of his wounds, and now he knows what has been moving around under his skin, vibrating his entire body. He wants to scream again, but this time he can't find his breath.

Slowly, she pulls them all out one by one, each time sticking her fingers under his skin and digging until she can get a good grip on one of the insects. He feels her fingers wriggling under his skin, and it doesn't hurt, but it makes him dizzy and nauseous. As the buzzing and crawling feeling begins to melt away, he feels his breathing and his heartbeat begin to slow down. When she's finally finished, she bends down and kisses every sting, and the touch of her lips burns for a moment, sealing the open wound closed. She kisses his neck, down each arm, down his chest, around his hips, and down his legs, more times than he can count, cauterizing his skin as she goes. With each kiss, he feels himself drift further and further from panic, and his arms and legs, which he didn't realize he'd been clenching, go limp. She kisses back up his legs, brushing his bare groin with her cheek, letting her hair linger on him, tickling the exposed skin.

He closes his eyes for a moment, just a moment, and when he opens them again, she's hovering above him, naked and glistening with river water that drips into his face. She lies on top of him and kisses him on the lips. He's still in a lot of pain, but the body kisses have relaxed him a bit and primed him for arousal all the same, so he opens up to her. She scrapes his lips with her teeth, grabbing his hand and placing it between her legs. He feels around confusedly for a moment before finding her hood with his index finger, and she moans into his mouth. "I want you to kiss me," she says, "You love me, don't you? That's what you said? Show me you love me." _I am kissing you_, he wants to say, but he can't get enough force behind his breath to make a sound. She pulls away from him and kneels over his face, with one leg on each side of his head. "I want you to kiss me here," she says, so he kisses her there. She tastes like saltwater.

He runs his tongue up and down between her folds, kissing her skin lightly and softly as she hums with delight above him. "Show me you love me," she pants again, "Show me. Show me." She rocks herself against his face, riding his lips and his tongue, gripping the sides of his head. He can't breathe, but the taste of her is so tangy and invigorating, and her breath is so heavy, that he can't bring himself to stop. It's all he can do to hold on to consciousness.

After a while she moves away, sliding back down his body until they're face to face again, and she grinds her hips down against him. She rubs herself firmly back and forth against his erection, pressing down but not letting him enter her, and his eyes roll up. It's almost painful, but it's so, so delicious. He balls his hands into fists and grips the air because he can't breathe, can't move, can't think. "Do you want to be inside of me?" she whispers into his ear, and he can just barely nod his head. (_Please_, he thinks, _please stop. Please._)

"Well, I want to be inside of you too," she says, and he has a split second to wonder what she means before he feels the blinding white pain of his skin splitting open. Bright red divots open up across his chest with each slash of her knife, spreading until they reach his sides. His flesh flaps open, bisecting his ribcage, and he can see his intercostal muscles under the dermis. When he inhales, they open wider, like perverse red lips spreading to expose bone teeth. She tugs on the skin above his left nipple, and it parts easily, rending connective tissue from muscle and bone (_it sounds like ripping open a sack of flour_) until he can see his own heart beating in time with his breath.

He tries to scream, but nothing comes out. He can't hear anything but the thud of his heartbeat and the sound of wind blowing through the branches of the trees above his head. His vision fades completely to black, and when he regains consciousness, his skin is whole again, and she is gone. He looks up at the moon through the leaves (_how much time has gone by?_), and it glows enormous and shiny like a silver coin, or like bubbles slowly rising to the surface of a lake. As it turns out, it isn't the moon at all. He watches the bubbles drift lazily upward over his head as he exhales.

He looks down, and he finds himself underwater, swimming just above her. He can just barely see her black hair, drifting up to brush against the skin of his stomach. She's naked again, and he can see her whole body, her olive skin, by the moonlight filtering through the water, making the surface of her shimmer and glow. He can see the curve of her breasts, her hips, the soft dip of her center, and his lungs burn with desire- no- with the rapidly firing electrical signals of dying cells, devoid of oxygen, suffocating on their own waste. He reaches down to cup her breast, and he feels her nipple harden against his thumb. She swims up to kiss him again, cupping him in the palm of her hand. She strokes him gently with her hand, licking his lips and biting his neck softly. He feels himself growing hard in her delicate fist, and his vision starts to go all... swimmy. She smiles at him and then swims down, taking him in her mouth.

He gasps, and the last of his air escapes his mouth, floating in small bubbles to the surface. She runs her tongue over him, brushing her teeth lightly against his foreskin, and he feels all of his blood and energy collecting in his groin. Her hands grip the base of his erection, pulling him into her mouth as she sucks the blood and sexual energy further and deeper. His heartbeat throbs in his ears as his vision starts to darken. The fire in his chest grows stronger until his heartbeat is as loud as a drum and he can feel it pulsing throughout his entire body, in his throat, in the palms of his hands, in the balls of his feet, in his erection inside her mouth. He tries to breathe, and his lungs fill with water. It seeps into all his nooks and crannies, coating his lungs, filling him, stuffing him, turning him hard and turgid. He's not sure, but he thinks he hears her laughing.

He blacks out again, and when his vision fades to white, he finds himself on the ground- or at least he thinks he's on the ground- and he inhales... and he inhales, and this time air fills his lungs, cold and crisp like autumn, like leaves turning color and lighting up the entire District with their fire. The trees burn like she burns- like they had burned _together_- and they take the buildings and the people with them, turning everything to ash and coal and charred husks of foundations, of bodies. He sees her silhouette backlit by the fire that follows in her wake, scorching the ground as she walks toward him.

When she reaches him, he sees that she glows blue like a low gas flame. He feels the heat radiating from her, but her touch doesn't scorch him. His skin is immune to her fire, but not to her touch, and when she puts a hand on his chest, his lungs burn again. That's when he realizes that he's burning, too. His flame is greenish-yellow, and it originates from his solar plexus, spreading down his legs and arms to a bright white-yellow at his fingertips.

He reaches out to her, touching her shoulder, and her clothes burn away, turning to ash and floating off into the air. She looks into his eyes and says, "Touch me," so he does. He kisses her, and her fire burns his throat, coating the inside of his body with damp warmth, a flickering, fluttering desire. She gives off energy like a small star, and he feels it humming, vibrating, through his chest, down to his groin and legs. "More," she says, so he picks her up, and she wraps her legs around his waist until he can back her up against a tree.

To say that he enters her would be to give him more agency than he really has. It is much more accurate to say that she pulls him into her, as if there is a black hole at her core that draws him and everything else towards her center, to be crushed under the weight of their own mass and condensed to nothingness. He burns white hot inside of her, and when he closes his eyes he sees every blood vessel in the thin skin of his eyelids, as though he were trying to block out the sun.

Her hair flutters up to tickle his face and wrap around his neck like a constrictor, tightening its hold as he pushes deeper inside her, cutting off his air until his lungs are full of nothing but a dry heat. Even still, he cannot stop. She rides him like he's some sort of half-human half-animal muttation, and it's the filthiest, most shameful, most beautiful thing he's ever done. Her skin has turned into the brightest white light, and her eyes glow until he can no longer make out iris from sclera from pupil. Her hair surrounds her face like a wispy black corona. He tries to speak her name, but he has no air, and again he can hear his heartbeat throbbing in his ears while he throbs inside her with a desperation unlike anything he's ever known.

This is nothing like the stolen moments under the covers, jerking himself furiously but silently with his lips clamped shut to avoid waking his brothers, and it is nothing like the sophomoric fumblings in the dark with the merchant girls who had lips skilled enough at kissing to arouse him but had clumsy hands that were too ineffective to get him off. (But he'd always gotten them off, hadn't he? That Peeta, he such a _giver_. Always giving and never taking.) No, this is so much more than that. This is everything and nothing. This is the purest and dirtiest thing in the entire cosmos. This is the very act of creation itself, the cleansing fire before the world can be rebuilt, and it is taking him down with it.

He feels the pressure building up in his torso, boiling slowly but steadily before losing control, atoms splitting and spinning off and colliding into one another. It's a chain reaction causing chaos in his body until he's splitting in two, exploding outwards, radiating from his groin to his stomach to his heart. He doesn't need to breathe anymore, because he finds that his body is now shattered into a million tiny pieces.

He floats like this, for a while. The million tiny pieces that used to be his body float like grains of sand, forming constellations in the infinite vacuum of space. He watches the stars expand, enlarge, implode, and die. This happens in the space of minutes, and he sees the whole universe expanding, spreading itself thin, until there's nothing left, until the entire thing collapses in on itself and turns inside out with a bang. He watches as everything in existence is made anew from the emptiness, as his body is pieced back together, as his bones knit and flesh weaves and cells reanimate.

He inhales, and he's back on the forest floor once more, staring up at the moon. He's shaking violently, shivering from the cold and the exposure. His pants are sticky, and he's pretty sure he's come all over the inside of them, but he can't wash them out right now. He tries to stand, but his leg won't support his weight, so he crawls into a thicket of bushes and covers himself with as many leaves as he can reach. His vision still dances with small points of shining yellow light (_or are those just sparkle bugs?_), but he thinks, for now, that this is real.

* * *

When Peeta wakes up, the first thing he always does is look around to figure out where he is. Even though he knows that he's been waking up in the same house in District 12 every morning for the past several months, he still doesn't quite trust it. Every morning, he fully expects to wake up in a cave, or on a beach, or in a prison cell or hospital room. He just has a hard time believing that it's all over.

Sometimes he wonders if the war will ever truly be over or if it will continue to linger on in the bodies and minds of the people who had to live through it and the people who were broken by it, the way he was, and countless others like him were. Peeta mourns his dead friends (he has not had time to process the death of his family, and he has no idea when he'll get around to doing that), but what really concerns him are the _survivors_, people like Johanna and Annie, or Katniss and Haymitch, people who were just broken and then dumped in this strange new world to fix themselves. He doesn't think that any of them are fully capable of fixing themselves, but he thinks that they might be able to help each other, at least, which is why he had insisted on returning to Victor's Village. He knows that between the three of them, they will always be triggering memories for one another, but he also knows that they need each other because no one else will understand. Sometimes misery just needs company.

Peeta wakes up and stares at the familiar wooden beams over his bed, watching (_a million tiny_) dust mites dance in the sunlight from the window. The illusion of safety is intact for at least one more day, because he's back in District 12, back in his house between those belonging to Katniss and Haymitch. He glances over at Katniss, who is lying next to him, still asleep. She had moved away from him in the night, toward the edge of the bed, but the sole of her foot is pressed against the calf of his good leg. She's facing away from him, and he can see her long dark hair spread out on the pillow (_like a black corona_). Though her hair is normally quite dark- almost black, even- the sunlight reflecting off of it gives it the shade of mahogany with slightly red tinges along the edges.

He picks up a lock of her hair and turns it over and over in his fingers, watching the way it changes color when light reflects off of it at different angles. More yellowish this way, more reddish that way, with dark brown and black over here (_turning color like leaves in autumn_).

As strange as it seems, considering what happened last night, he has no idea how comfortable he is supposed to be with her body right now. They had never had a whole lot of boundaries with one another, but that had been mainly out of survival (in one way or another). What he really wants to do is spoon up against her back and breathe next to her neck, but he doesn't know how she would react to that. They had crossed the line into a new level of intimacy last night (and this was true intimacy, as nobody had been watching; he would at least allow himself to believe that much), but he doesn't know what that means here and now in the cool, clear light of day.

They hadn't exactly discussed it, and although Peeta is fairly excellent at reading people, he just isn't in the business of making assumptions where Katniss is concerned. He's never been the kind of guy who just reaches out and takes whatever he wants- and he isn't stupid: he knows that some people would consider him a lesser man for that, but he doesn't care. He doesn't want the kind of manhood that doesn't take anyone else into account.

He contents himself with just lying next to her until she wakes up, at which time he'll take his cue from her on what to do. Until then, he twists the lock of hair back and forth between his fingers, watching the fire red highlights light up and fade away with the direction of the sun.

_Fire_. That sparks a memory from his dream last night (_they burned together_). He can only pull back wisps of it that he doesn't fully understand (such as why the taste of saltwater is threatening to give him an erection right now), but he knows that the gist of it was the memory of his tracker jacker hallucinations during the first Games. He remembers having otherworldly dreams- almost nightmares- about being with Katniss and the two of them doing disgusting and transcendent things to one another.

He isn't entirely surprised that he dreamed about that last night. At the time, he had been experiencing a lot of confusion about what to do and how to feel, much less how to even decode what she was thinking. The original hallucinations likely reflected his fears and insecurities (and desires) at the time, and bringing it back up now must be directly related to the manifestation- the _extraction_- of those same insecurities and desires when she finally came to him last night.

The sad thing- the sick thing- is that he doesn't even know if his memories of his own hallucinations are real, or if they were also tainted by the hijacking. He imagines that they were, but he guesses that he will never know the full extent to which they've been modified, since nobody else can really tell him whether something that happened entirely in his own mind was real or not real. On the one hand, it would have been hard for them to manipulate memories that they couldn't even know about since no record exists of them on tape. On the other hand, tracker jacker venom works directly on the fear center in the brain, so it could have seeped into those strange, erotic memories on its own, without any prodding from the Peacekeepers who detained him.

Perhaps the most _interesting_ thing about it, though, was that despite how terrifying the memory should have been, Peeta hadn't been afraid. There are so few memories of the past three years that don't completely dismantle him, awake or asleep, that he has no idea how he managed to get through it last night without waking up in terror. He vaguely remembers something Dr. Aurelius told him once about the importance of brain chemistry in determining how one reacts to the recollection of memories, and he wonders if that has anything to do with it? Maybe he should give Aurelius a call this afternoon.

Katniss begins to stir now, rubbing her eyes and looking blearily around his room. She looks confused for a moment until her eyes focus on him, and then they calm with recognition. She has little red lines down her cheek from the embroidery on the pillows. Peeta smiles and says quietly, "Good morning." She grunts in affirmation and stretches, and when the sheet pulls away to expose her breasts, she either doesn't notice or doesn't mind, because she takes a moment before covering back up. (Peeta thinks of saltwater again and feels a stirring in his groin, but he pushes the sensation to the back of his mind- for now.) "How did you sleep?"

"Good," Katniss says lazily, as if she doesn't quite believe it yet. "Really good, actually." She bunches up the sheet and sits up, and Peeta can see her vertebrae poking out under her skin all down the line of her back, down to her- "How about you?"

Peeta looks up quickly. "Oh, you know. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, which I guess is saying something." He adjusts the blankets around his midsection, trying to be subtle.

Katniss doesn't look at him, but she does smile slightly to herself. "Yeah," she says, digging around at the foot of the bed for her clothes. She finds her shirt and pulls it on, then stands up to pull up her shorts. She pulls the blanket back up to the pillow on her side of the bed and smoothes it out next to him, her finger lingering for a moment on the embroidery. "I should probably go back home."

Peeta sits up at that. "Wait. Do... you want some breakfast or something?" He doesn't say, _Don't go, please. I just got you back. Don't go already._

She thinks about this as she twists her hair up on top of her head, securing it with a ribbon from her pocket. "Greasy Sae is probably already on her way over. I really ought to be there." She looks at Peeta for a moment with a look that he can't quite read, and then she leans over to kiss him on the forehead. "You can join us in a little while... if you want? Okay?" It sounds to him as if she wants him to come over but doesn't actually want to come out and say as much. She probably wants some time alone to think. Katniss always wants time alone to think through things. It's frustrating as hell... but he respects it.

"Okay," he says. They exchange goodbyes (and another brief kiss), and she leaves. He waits until he hears her footsteps descending the creaky stairs and the sound of his door latching shut, and then he flops backward into the bed, feeling heavy with thoughts and emotions. He lies there for a while- he doesn't know how long- and thinks about the events of last night. He turns each memory over and over in his mind like a child collecting pebbles, picking out the smoothest, shiniest ones and pocketing them for later.

He was struck by how easily they had moved together, with a kind of familiarity that he'd never experienced before with any of the other girls. It made sense, since they had spent so much time together in such strange and extreme circumstances, that they would have picked up some subconscious sense of one another's body language. Even still, he had _not_ been prepared to see her in such a light. He had wanted it, yes, desperately, but it was almost as though he never actually expected it to happen.

Peeta exhales loudly into the silent room, overcome with images from the night before. He's overwhelmed by this new erotic element of their relationship, and that's putting it lightly. He can easily picture her body, the swell of her small breasts, the curve of her hips, and her long, black hair sticking to her collarbone with sweat. He can hear the noises she made when he touched her, small, soft humming noises and sharp gasps, and he can feel the way her body responded to his touch, arching off of the bed and shaking with impatience. He can even _smell_ her, primarily like girl sweat but with light undertones of bar soap. He exhales again, much more shakily, and reaches down to feel his erection under the covers.

He realizes that he's not going to get anything done today until he can clear his head of these intoxicating images of her. He hasn't had this much pent up sexual energy in longer than he can remember. His sex drive has been awfully perfunctory for a few years now, much more like opening a valve every so often to release steam than something to enjoy, so this is an incredibly welcome turn of events.

He slips his hand inside his shorts and strokes himself slowly for a while to savor the deliciousness of it, the desire and the _passion_ that has been absent for so long because of everything his poor mind and body have been through. He replays the events of last night in his mind's eye, feeling himself grow harder as he retraces how he had been able to get Katniss Everdeen to come in his hands. He had held her, touched her body, and made her make those little noises. Thinking about her while touching himself is not a new thing; Katniss had been a recurring character in his sexual fantasies ever since he had figured out what men and women do together. She hadn't been there every time, but often enough to stick out in his mind- just like how in real life, he had noticed other girls and been with other girls, but somehow his mind just kept coming back to her sooner or later. It's different this time, though, because he doesn't have to speculate; he _knows_ what she looks like, sounds like, and smells like. He wants to know even more- what she _tastes_ like and _feels_ like on the inside.

He wants to be back on top of her, manipulating her body with his fingertips, making her sigh and squirm. He wants to make her come again- if he could do nothing else for the rest of his life, he would just want to make her come over and over. And- he barely wants to admit this to himself, even in his own fantasies- but he wants to be inside her. He feels himself flushing at the thought of it, and he strokes himself faster, spurred on by a sudden vigor. Oh, _god_, he wants to be inside her, to manipulate her not with his fingers but with his _body_, and to make her come around him so that he can _feel_ it. Peeta lets out a few harsh breaths, clenching his free hand and his abdominal muscles as his body tenses up and then releases in waves as he comes.

He lets out a few more shallow breaths as his muscles relax and go limp. He lies back and closes his eyes, just breathing for a little while. When his head clears, he feels a bit sheepish because he knows that he'd have no idea what to actually do with his body to make her come like that, but it's just- it's an instinct that takes over when he thinks about being on top of her. And it isn't- it isn't just _about_ that. He knows that, even though he gets... overwhelmed by her sometimes.

It strikes Peeta- not for the first time- how strange it is to be in love. Love makes a man want to do the most animalistic things with the very person for whom he has the most tender feelings. Not violent things, just... crude things. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to him when he doesn't have an erection, but it's the truth. And, to get away from the crudeness for a moment and focus on the bigger picture, something else very important had happened last night. She hadn't said she loved him, but she had said that she was _his_. That's something. He didn't know what, but it was definitely _something_. It felt more like a promise than an affirmation- it didn't give any labels to what was going on between them (after everything that had happened in the past few years, it would feel absolutely absurd to call Katniss anything quite so mundane as his _girlfriend_), but it acknowledged that there _is_ something going on- something genuine this time, something that may eventually get a name if he can be patient. He could live with that.


End file.
